


Algor Mortis

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: No Death - Mirel Wagner (Song)
Genre: Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:09:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1796722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I thought there was something worse than death back then, but that was before he started haunting me – before I wished Joanna back to life, and she crawled out of her grave and came home."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Algor Mortis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



> Thank you D for beta duty!

I see him everywhere.

When I'm brushing my teeth he's there in the mirror, just his shadowy hand wrapped around the edge of the open door like he's about to fling it wide. When I blink he's gone. Sometimes it takes more than one blink. There are footsteps following me wherever I walk, but never any feet. Sometimes I can feel him behind me while I'm typing or reading or making tea. It's not a breath – I suppose he doesn't breathe – but a lingering presence, like on those mornings when you know you're not alone in the house even when you've only been awake for ten seconds.

I've heard of being haunted by ghosts, but nobody ever talks about being haunted by death. I suppose the ones he haunts usually end up dead so they can't.

I don't know if he wants to hurt me, though. He's never tried to speak. He disappears when I notice him, like he's embarrassed or waiting for the right moment.

I want to tell him it's not my fault Joanna escaped. Of course I wished her back, but I never expected it to work. My wishes haven't come true since I was a little girl, since birthday candles and shooting stars and Sunday chicken wishbones. When you're little you learn to modify what you wish for without realising it, I think, to preserve the magic. Wishing for a pony is too much, but I wished for a trip to the zoo once and it happened, and when I wished for sunshine one birthday it stopped raining after a while and I felt so powerful, like I could spin the world backward if I wanted to – because you truly do believe in magic when you're little, don't you? You're so certain that you'll snap your mother's spine if you forget to jump over the pavement cracks, and your toys all come alive while you're sleeping, and something worse than death is lurking just behind the edge of the mirror waiting for you to chant Bloody Mary one too many times after dark.

I thought there was something worse than death back then, but that was before he started haunting me – before I wished Joanna back to life, and she crawled out of her grave and came home.

I don't know how it happened. I wish I knew. If I knew how I did it I might be able to undo it.

 

 

No, I wouldn't undo it at all. Why would I even say that?

  

* * *

  

Joanna was fearless when she was alive. I mean, when she was alive the first time. She was in my brother's climbing club – that's where I saw her first, in a photo on Samir's Flickr. She was all gold tan and pink cheeks and glimmering sweat on the top of some ridiculous cliff, laughing and adjusting her helmet while he stood there with a gormless look on his face and his arm around her shoulders. Of course I teased him about trying to get off with cute girls on top of mountains, but he said actually he'd slipped somehow ten feet from the top and he was too shaken to stand without a crutch. (Then he took hold of my hand and wrote her phone number on it in biro.)

In a way I'm not surprised she refused to stay put in the ground. She died pulling some stupid drowning teenager out of the old quarry lake on her way to a climb. I laughed with her mum the day after the funeral, when the immediacy of losing her had started feeling a fraction less like a knife in the guts: we drank all the wine in the fridge and bawled and laughed until everything ached because _how cross would she have been_ , Jenny said, leaning on me and trembling and wiping her streaming eyes and nose on her palms, _can you imagine how much she must have cursed that boy for ruining her climb?_

If this were a horror film she would have dragged herself out of the grave for revenge. Instead, she just came home.

  

* * *

  

We were in bed one day – too late to still be in bed, really, but it was Sunday and summer and the breeze coming in through the open window smelled like cut grass and barbecues – sharing a pillow and talking about nonsense. I don't remember exactly but one of us said something about death, stupid ways to die or horrible ways to die or whatever, and we got talking about whether there was such a thing as a nice way to die. _Suffocation_ , she said, doing this obscene tongue gesture that made my heart flip over until I pulled the pillow out from under her head and hit her with it. She emerged laughing, and leaned over the side of the bed to look for her knickers. _I don't intend to die_ , she said, and when she came back up still bare from the waist down and invaded my side of the bed to kiss me I could feel her smiling against my mouth. _I'm gonna live forever. You'd better, too._

Then when she died I didn't even go to her funeral. I know that's awful. Sometimes I really regret it, sometimes I don't. I just couldn't stand people telling me she was in a better place, like it was even possible for there to be a better place than this world full of mountains and rivers and caves and trees that she loved so much. She loved the way people do in films, that kind of crazy poetic exuberance that makes you want to not watch anything with _inspirational_ or _breathtaking_ in the reviews because you know it'll be lame as fuck with a swooping violin soundtrack. It worked better without a script. She believed in the world like I tried to believe in the power of wishes when I was little, only she never had to lower her expectations to fit in with reality. She set her expectations higher and higher, and made reality conform.

Shit I'm crying so hard right now it's just

 

 

Sometimes I think he's just got a fucking warped sense of humour. Like maybe he heard my wish somehow – what the fuck does he do, hang around dead people's families hoping to hear his name mentioned? – and he sent her back just to see my reaction. I don't know what he expected if that's the case. Am I supposed to start screaming or go all Walking Dead on her with a gun or a fucking shovel or something? Did he think I'd panic and try to kill her again?

He probably didn't expect me to kiss her. Maybe he's still hanging around because he's a pervert.

  

* * *

  

She's dead but she's alive. Not really sure how this works.

She breathes, but it tastes stale. She doesn't have a heartbeat. When I found her standing in the garden like a kid lost in the supermarket her skin was this weird white like cottage cheese down her front, but her back and sides were mottled purple like a full-body bruise. I suppose that's what blood looks like when there's nothing working to pump it around and you've been lying underground in a cardboard coffin for a few days. Now she's walking around she's white and blue all over, with livid purple legs like she's wearing West Ham knee socks.

For a crazy few moments I thought she'd been buried alive and had to bust herself out like in Kill Bill, but that's when I first saw death. Should I capitalise his name? Is that even his name or is it a title? He was hiding in the shadows of the garden shed. Hiding isn't the right word really. He blended with the shadows. You could hardly tell he was there at all. I wouldn't have noticed if not for that immense sensation that someone was watching. Some _thing_. The malevolent curiosity coming off him in waves made the air electric, like the smell after a thunderstorm.

She's dead, I know she's dead, but _she's alive_. I kissed her and she's dead, she was cold, she doesn't have a heartbeat, but _she's alive_. Does that make it less weird? I'm trying not to think about it. I can smell grave dirt in her hair but _she's alive_. And it's

 

 

It worked for Sleeping Beauty, right? I'll keep trying.

I tried CPR but I think she's been dead too long.

  

* * *

  

So here we are, Joanna and me and death hovering around the edges like some idiot sniggering boy suggesting a threesome the way some of Samir's mates used to do when they got wasted at parties. She punched one of them once. She could take the comments, we both could – it's the kind of thing you have to learn to live with when you're a girl with a girlfriend, even though you can't bring yourself to find anything even slightly amusing about it no matter how much everyone tries to claim it's _just banter_ – but there are limits and when this drunken prick gave up on the jibes and put his hand on her bum she turned round and socked him so hard in the face she came away with blood on her knuckles.

I wish she'd wake up properly. I wish she'd turn round and put her fist through death's face and tell him to fuck off and leave us alone. I haven't got a candle or a falling star this time, but if I wished her back alive with nothing to help me then maybe I can wish her back to _life_. I want her how she used to be – wild blonde hair, raucous laughter, crooked eyeliner wings, chewed sleeve hems, cracking knuckles, ruined bleeding feet from climbing cliffs and hiking through mountains, I want it all back. That tiny feather charm she used to wear on a fragile gold chain so fine I could see it jumping slightly with the thud of her heart while she was sleeping. She was buried in it but it's gone now. I don't know whether she broke it climbing out of her grave or death took it for a souvenir but either way it's his fault and if the bastard ever steps out from the shadows I'll

 

 

Fuck it. How do you argue with death?

  

* * *

  

She doesn't talk any more, she doesn't move unless I hold her hand and lead her somewhere, but I woke up this morning and she was on her side when I know I laid her down on her back. She was staring through me off into a distance I couldn't see when I turned to look because it was blocked off by the bedroom wall three feet from my face, but still. If she's learned to turn over she can learn to look at me. She can learn to kiss me back. I wish she'd just move or hold my hand or _anything_.

This morning when I got out of the shower I saw death's face in the medicine cabinet mirror. He's furious. I've never see

 

 

Anyway after I threw up from fear (didn't know that was actually possible but there go my eggs) I went back in the bedroom and Joanna was sitting up on her own.

Now I'm googling like crazy because yes I've seen Supernatural and all that crap yes I know salt and iron if you're fighting ghosts but what about when it's _real life_ – and, more to the point, _real death_? I don't know how this happened, was it my wish gone wrong or his game gone wrong or some other great fucked up cosmic mystery I DON'T KNOW

 

I just wanted to write all this down in cas

 

He's in our room now and Joanna's holding my hand she's not even awake really she's just staring but she's holding my hand

 

If he wants her back he'll have to take m


End file.
